Saturday, May 1, 2010

A Fragile State of Mind


It feels safe. But a transparent safe. The kind of safe you see in horror movies when the main character suddenly spots the ghost/killer/ hooded person with the fishhook and dives behind the closest table and waits....and waits...and waits..and nothing happens. So he takes a chance and peeks, nothing happens; he stands up and looks around, nothing happens; he decides to walk right into the middle of room so anything can see him and he can really see no one and still nothing happens. He is safe; he seems safe. He takes a deep breath and walks out and....well, mistake....fishhook to the head.

That is the kind of safe I'm feeling right now and probably what most Tiger fans are feeling right now about our recruiting class. It's too dangerous to talk about it out loud, the whole thing could crumble. We are all waiting for what can go wrong, for everything to fall apart like everything else has involving Tiger basketball in the last year or so. However, you can't really blame us. In a span of just a couple of years Tiger fans saw their championship choked away, their Diva Coach bolting for more publicity and more money, their prized recruiting class stolen by said Diva, snake-oil salesaman coach, and to add insult to injury the first of this list now technically never happened as the NCAA has decided that the Derrick Rose was ineligible and that it was our fault that they cleared him. I won't even mention the big time, season-saving recruitment of Latavouis Williams and then his subsequent defection to go pro in the NBDL instead or that we basically lost two championships in three years (John Wall, Cousins, Coleman, Sallie, Witherspoon, Bledsoe..they would have won the title + the one Coach X choked away for us, okay the one we choked away). The point is Memphis fans are seemingly always braced for the worst. That is why whenever we talk about our recruiting class we can only whisper it, just in case, no jinxing it or getting our hopes up so when the whole thing inevitably does fall apart we can safely say 'Oh we knew something was going to go wrong'.

But it seems as though the fresh pollen-filled, allergy inciting Memphis spring breezes are beginning to wash away the painful memories and pessimistic feelings that have devoured our pschyes. It feels okay now to be cautiously optimistic, this recruiting class might just make it all the way to Memphis, maybe even play a game or two in a Memphis uniform at the Fedex Forum. It might be okay to discuss what might happen next year and what could be. Will Barton, Joe Jackson, Jelan Kendrick, Tarik Black, Chris Crawford, Hippolyte Tsafack, and Antonio Barton, we can even say their names out loud now..... with a slight, quiet tinge of hope. Most of the coaching moves have been made and Josh Pastner is still here. Of course we're all sure that Roy Williams will announce his retirement anyday now and UNC will contact Pastner and take all our recruits, but it hasn't happened yet. It has been a long year since the destruction of the Memphis basketball program at the unforgiving hands of Coach X, but it seems, just for the moment, that we are finally at the light at the end of the tunnel that we have been dreaming of for so long. The only problem is most of us still expect it to be a train.

4 comments:

  1. even if cal stayed . . would you respect him as a person or as a coach? He's the ultimate recruiter, but how could you be proud of a guy who represents his school like that? He's literally BEGGING terrence jones to reconsider right now, and he's probably trying to guilt trip him by telling him how many people he's disappointing and some garbage like that. I actually kind of wish he stayed at Memphis. Because for me, Calipari plus UK is like if Osama Bin Laden became the supreme ruler of russia, south korea, iraq, iran, pakistan, and china and was hell bent on destroying all that is good and awesome about the world.

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  2. Don't you mean North Korea? and why is china in there? Charlie what are you talking about? However when Cal is your guy you love him, cause he gets things done, he goes all out and just finds a way to get what his team needs, he brings about results. But he's an ass, the ultimate me first guy, just happens when he's your coach the team's desires and his are fortuitously aligned.

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  3. china has nukes, and in 10 years, their military will be more powerful than anyone's. I'd be scared if osama took over China. Very scared.

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  4. well, if you're just going for power wouldn't it be scarier if he just took over the U.S. and besides i'm pretty sure North Korea has nukes, why would you mention South Korea and not North Korea..and pakistan? why throw that in there if you have China? And i'm pretty sure Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal of all of them so if you were going for Nukes you could have just stopped there...once again Charlie..what are you talking about? you just want you some calipari.

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